Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin最新文献

People hold different beliefs about the changeability of happiness. Some believe that happiness is biologically predetermined and thus unchangeable (essentialist beliefs), while others believe that it is malleable and can be changed (non-essentialist beliefs). Do these beliefs have a tangible impact on how individuals actually experience well-being? Here, we predict and empirically demonstrate that endorsing essentialist beliefs about happiness (EBH) can result in a self-fulfilling prophecy that buffers the changes in subjective well-being (SWB) following life events. Through a series of four studies utilizing diverse methodologies (total N = 7,364), we provide converging evidence that happiness essentialists, compared to non-essentialists, experience relatively stable levels of SWB following life events, particularly negative ones. We find that this pattern also emerges when people recall past events or anticipate hypothetical or impending future events. Together, happiness essentialism extends beyond mere belief and has real-world implications for how individuals experience fluctuations in SWB.

Emotion regulation research has routinely pitted the antecedent-focused strategy of cognitive reappraisal against the response-focused strategy of expressive suppression. This research has largely yielded that reappraisal is an effective strategy by which to change emotional experience, but implications of expressive suppression are not as clear. This may be due to variations in experimental methodologies, which have not consistently evaluated suppression against a within-subject control condition, as well as conceptual limitations that have muddled the implications of significant findings. Across two high-powered, within-subject paradigms, the present study demonstrates that expressive suppression induces significant decreases in negative emotion relative to one's general attempts to downregulate negative emotion (Study 1) and respond naturally (Study 2). Our findings add to a growing body of literature that demonstrate that suppression may facilitate emotion regulation at both the expressive and experiential levels, and underscore the importance of incorporating flexibility and goal-focused frameworks in future research.

Using data from Project Implicit collected between 2005 and 2020, comprising 1,489,721 observations in 111 countries, we find that implicit and explicit gender stereotypes about career and family are more pronounced in more economically developed countries. Besides, these gender stereotypes are strongly correlated at the country level with gender differences in values (such as family values), self-reported personality traits (such as agreeableness or dependence), and occupational preferences (such as health-related occupations), and may account for the fact that these gender imbalances are "paradoxically" stronger in more economically developed countries (the so-called "gender equality paradox").In line with social role theory, our findings suggest that there are in developed countries strong gender stereotypes about career and family, which may at least partly explain the persistence or even the "paradoxical worsening" of a number of gender differences in these countries, despite generally high levels of gender equality in other areas.

Sacrificing a target to save a group violates deontological ethics against harm but upholds utilitarian ethics to maximize outcomes. Although theorists examine many factors that influence dilemma decisions, we examined justice concerns: We manipulated the moral character of sacrificial targets, then measured participants' dilemma responses and just world beliefs. Across four studies (N=1116), participants considering guilty versus innocent targets scored lower on harm-rejection (deontological) responding, but not outcome-maximizing (utilitarian) responding assessed via process dissociation. Just world beliefs (both personal and general) predicted lower utilitarian and somewhat lower deontological responding, but these effects disappeared when accounting for shared variance with psychopathy. Results suggest that dilemma decisions partly reflect the moral status of sacrificial targets and concerns about the fairness implications of sacrificing innocent targets to save innocent groups.

Little attention has been given to self-objectification, which refers to viewing oneself as an instrument or object rather than a full human, in an educational context. To address this gap, the current research aims to test self-objectification among students, and we hypothesized that a performance goal orientation would result in self-objectification (H1), which would further predict reduced authenticity (H2). Six studies (N = 1,716) confirmed our hypotheses. Studies 1-2, employing cross-sectional and 2-wave designs, found a positive association between a performance goal orientation and self-objectification among college students. Study 3 further showed the link among middle school students (i.e., adolescents). Studies 4-5b employed experimental methodologies to demonstrate the causal relationship between the performance goal orientation and self-objectification. In addition, increased self-objectification triggered by the performance goal orientation was further related to reduced authenticity (Studies 3-5b). This work advances the understanding of self-objectification in the educational domain.

Humanity's long-term welfare may lie in the hands of those who are presently living, raising the question of whether people today hold the generations of tomorrow in their moral circles. Five studies (N_Total = 1652; Prolific) reveal present-oriented bias in the moral standing of future generations, with greater perceived moral obligation, moral concern, and prosocial intentions for proximal relative to distal future targets. Yet, present-oriented bias appears stronger for socially close compared with socially distant targets and for human targets relative to non-human animals and entities in nature. Individual differences, including longtermism beliefs and subjective imaginative vividness, predict greater concern for and obligation to the future. Likewise, concern and obligation predict greater future-oriented generosity. Our studies are among the first to explore moral considerations for targets across deep temporal expanses, reconcile conflicting evidence in the extant literature on moral judgment and future-thinking, and offer practical implications for bettering the shared societal future.

This work examined the power of live music events to enhance wellbeing through collective effervescence (CE)-the sense of sacredness and connection felt when in large groups. Four studies (N = 789) using both university and community samples examined the relationship between live music events and CE and how this relationship contributes to positive, lasting outcomes. Results suggest that CE is highly related to positive outcomes associated with attending live music events. CE uniquely predicted meaning in life and enjoyment during the event above and beyond related constructs. Feeling CE was also related to greater meaning in life during the event and continued happiness a week after live music events. Further, CE mediated effects between various elements of live music events (e.g., parasocial bonds with the artist) and positive lasting outcomes. In summary, CE plays a key role in the lasting wellbeing that follows live music events.

Individuals may consider socioeconomic status (SES) change from an absolute or relative standpoint. Across five studies and supplementary analyses of secondary data, we found that individuals who perceive SES as being unlikely to change (i.e., low perceived social mobility) tend to consider SES change from a relative standpoint-i.e., one person's gain in SES occurs at the expense of another's loss in SES-reflecting that they harbor zero-sum beliefs regarding social hierarchies. In other words, the extent to which individuals believe that society is mobile predicts how they consider the nature of social mobility. This relationship is mediated by a scarcity mindset and further predicts the tendency for aggression. The findings held when we controlled for variables such as perceived economic inequality, income, and education.

Is anti-Black discrimination concentrated among a discriminatory few, or widespread across many decision-makers? The handful of studies that have addressed this question have reached divergent conclusions, with some suggesting that discrimination follows the 80/20 rule (i.e., a Pareto distribution) and others suggesting that discrimination is normally distributed. This paper explores the distribution of discrimination in hiring, housing, and judicial decisions. Study 1 examined the distribution of anti-Black discrimination in judges' repeated sentencing decisions. The distribution of discrimination was more consistent with a normal distribution than a Pareto distribution. In Study 2, meta-analyses of hiring and housing field experiments revealed anti-Black discrimination in more than 80% of studies. Simulations of widespread discrimination using a normal distribution were more consistent with these experimental data than were simulations of concentrated discrimination using a Pareto distribution. These findings suggest that discrimination is not concentrated in the behaviors of a few highly biased individuals.

Two implicit propositional measures designed to detect faking in personality-related scales were tested across four experimental studies. Study 1 (n = 116) included the Deception Relational Responding Task and Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire as the faking-detector and target scale, respectively. Respondents were randomly assigned to faking or no-faking conditions. Faking respondents were instructed to appear opposite to their narcissistic profile, while no-faking had to respond honestly. In Study 2 (n = 133), the faking-detector was the Deception Implicit Association Test (Dec-aIAT), while the target scale and faking/no-faking instructions remained the same. In Studies 3 (n = 74) and 4 (n = 111), the faking-detector was again the Dec-aIAT, while the target scale was the Big Five Questionnaire-2. Faking respondents had to adhere to a desirable target profile (Study 3; faking-good) or its opposite (Study 4; faking-bad) while no-faking should respond honestly. Overall, the implicit measures showed adequate-to-excellent reliability, discriminating power, and classification accuracy.